Wondering whether Rob Ford could win the American presidency against an equally divisive candidate is sort of like wondering whether The Flash could beat Superman in a footrace: it’s a contest that can’t, won’t, and shouldn’t ever occur. And yet, for some reason, a U.S. polling company spent some of its valuable time asking 845 American voters whether they’d support mayor Ford if he were to run against Sarah Palin.

It’s not clear what the relevance of the hypothetical match-up is supposed to be. As a Canadian, Rob Ford can’t seek the presidency; Palin had her chance in 2012 and chose not to. What’s more, if the outcome of the survey conducted by Public Policy Polling (and published by Talking Points Memo) is anything to go by, it’s just as well that both names stayed off the ballot. Neither candidate scored well on favourability (Palin: 38 per cent; Ford: 5 per cent). In a head-to-head matchup, though, Palin trounced Ford by 12 percentage points, 38 to 26.

It’s possible, of course, that the mayor’s problem is his relative lack of name recognition. Maybe he’d have done better if the survey had referred to him by his full title: “the crack-smoking mayor of Toronto.”